Technology Team

Meeting Minutes
02/14/08

Attendees: Dan Reke, Theron Niekamp, Nathan Walters, Carol Marion, Carol Rigola, Lisa Allred (Guest), Ann Miller, Dr. Salisbury, Harry Lawhorn

Absent: Chuck Steel

Celebrate Successes

• Ann took her Education class this week on a field trip to see Edison’s classroom technology. They were very impressed.

• Carol Marion built new WebAdvisor accounts in Test for students and employees using the new parameters. It only took one hour to run.

• Theron was then able to import the account information into the SQL database he will be using to create import (.csv) file.

Student Account Creation Timetable

Carol Marion distributed a document showing account creation and deletion timetables. That brought up two questions:

Q1: Do student WebAdvisor accounts need to be deleted at any point?
 
A: We agreed that we should delete WebAdvisor accounts (approximately) when students are deleted from Active Directory. They won’t be able to access their WebAdvisor account at that point anyway, because being deleted from Active Directory means that their WebAdvisor Accounts can not be validated when signing in. Since the account will take up storage and processing time, we might as well delete the accounts. In addition, if a student still has a WebAdvisor account and they try to log in after being deleted from Active Directory, they will get a message indicating that there is something wrong with their password. At that point, they might call the Help Desk for assistance, when in reality they just are not supposed to be able to access accounts any more.

We agreed to the following student account deletion:
• Theron’s automated process that creates the import (.csv) file will also create a save file of former Students whose WebAdvisor accounts need to be deleted.
• A mnemonic will be run weekly using the aforementioned save file(s) to delete the appropriate, WebAdvisor accounts.

Q2: Do faculty/staff WebAdvisor Accounts need to be deleted at any point?
 
A: There was considerable discussion about deleting or retaining all or any of the employee accounts in different scenarios without coming to any consensus. However, we did establish two points:

1. We need adhere to the established processes of the E-mail/Exchange/LAN CQI Committee.

2. The volume of this work will be low enough that it can be handled manually, so we do not need to be overly concerned about an automated process for deleting faculty/staff accounts at this time.

The conclusion for now is that:

1. Theron will leave employees who leave Edison in the import file for now.

2. We will not change the current process for deleting employee accounts for now. We might want to revisit that or request the E-mail/Exchange/LAN CQI Committee to address that after we have student accounts and e-mail up and running.

3. If we need to retain the ability to receive e-mail sent to an employee e-mail account after the employee leaves, it is possible to re-direct that e-mail to the inbox of another, existing employee.

4. We need to think about deleting employee WebAdvisor Accounts further.

This discussion for the first question also led to the following:

Correction/Clarification: If a student withdraws from all classes and then does not register for classes after that, they will fall off of the import file (and then be removed from Active Directory) 365 days after the day they withdrew from classes. They will not keep their accounts until 365 days after the last day of the last semester for which they enrolled.

Process Questions

Q: Will the 365-Rule apply towards Adjunct Faculty when creating the new script for CSV files? Currently we receive notification of account deletion from the Human Resource Office and perform MANUAL account deletions for permanent FT faculty and F-PT staff members.
 
A: This ties into the discussion of Q2 above which did not result in a decision. We will need to revisit this.

Q: What will be the Account Policies for Food Services AVI and Winans? What will they be issued?
 
A: There will be no change for AVI – they will still have an e-mail and NT account. Winans will not have an account.

Q: Do we need accounts for Kids’ College? If so, how should we handle that?
 
A: This can probably be handled the same way as B&I classes. However, we need to revisit this after re-discussing the process for B&I accounts (see below).


Follow Up on Items from Last Week


Last week, we had the following item:

Q: Question from B & I – Shirley Moore posed the following question…”When will we have to send Network Services the number of students? We take registrations up until the class begins. However, we do make a go/no-go decision at least 24 hours before the class begins. If we have 6 students and we want to hedge for 3 more, can we tell you 9 students 24 hours before the class begins? We always know the start and end date and class name. For computer classes, we usually know the rooms.”
 
A: We will only use one account per class (see below for more details), so it won’t take that long to create, nor will it matter if a student signs up even after a class begins. If Core Services creates the accounts a week in advance, and then B&I cancels the class, that work will be for naught. However, if Client Service waits until the go/no-go decision is made 24 hours before the class is scheduled to begin, the account might not get created if there are vacations, illnesses, or crises to attend to. Chuck and Harry will need to think about this and get back to the Team with a suggestion about the timing of the notice from B&I.

Does Core Services have a recommendation for that timing or anything to discuss on this topic?

This resulted in the discussion of not doing it that way. However, we ran out of time, and we will have to revisit this at our next meeting.

Next Meeting:

Monday, February 18th at the regular time.